by Pete Hautman
“Yellow?” This is getting very complicated for a burger stand that doesn’t even have cheese.
“Chips?”
“No, thanks.”
“To drink?”
I look at the cans lined up on the shelf next to her.
“A Pepsi and a Mountain Dew.”
Behind her a guy is standing at a huge, steaming griddle covered with blobs of meat and a pile of sliced onions swimming in a shallow lake of greasy water. It looks like the burgers are being boiled. He scoops up a dripping patty covered with onions, sticks it in a bun, and wraps it with wax paper. Thirty seconds later I’m running across the street to catch up with Knob.
“With or without?” I say.
Knob jumps like I’ve goosed him. He sees me and smiles, then sees the burgers and his smile gets bigger.
“Oh, hey, wow. Thanks, man. With!” His hands are shaking as he takes the burger with onions.
“Pepsi or Dew?” I ask him.
“I love me a Dew.”
There is no place to sit, so we hunch down on the sidewalk with our backs against the wall of a liquor store.
“Love me a Pete’s,” Knob says. He takes an enormous bite; juices run down his beard. I try a smaller bite. It’s not a normal burger. The bun is totally soggy, and the first bite seems wrong—soft, bland . . . and completely delicious. I can’t stop eating because there’s no place to set it down. Knob finishes his in about thirty seconds. Mine doesn’t take much longer. By the time I’m done, my hands are all greasy and I’ve dribbled ketchup down the front of my shirt.
“That hit the spot!” Knob says. He guzzles his Dew. “You find your gal?”
“Not yet.”
“You keep looking.”
I glance down toward the coffee shop, then at the hamburger line. I’m still hungry.
“You want another one?” I ask. I want to try one with the onions.
“You buying?”
“Sure.”
Knob and I cross the street and get in line. We’re behind a couple who look about my age. The guy is wearing a Packers cap, a green-and-yellow baseball jacket, and cargo shorts. The girl has hoop earrings, a blond ponytail, and a maroon T-shirt.
“We should’ve gone to Culver’s,” the guy is saying. “You don’t have to stand in line for an hour, and we could get fries.”
“I don’t want fries,” the girl says.
“Well, I do.”
“You’re such an ass. You said we could go wherever I wanted.”
“I didn’t know you were gonna pick Pete’s.”
“The burgers are pretty good,” I say, mostly to stop their arguing. They both turn and look at me, then at Knob. The guy has little eyes that make his face look big, and the girl has a big face that makes her eyes look small. When she looks at Knob, her nose wrinkles, her mouth contorts, and she edges back.
“The line moves fast once it gets going,” I say.
“We live here,” the girl says. Her shirt is printed with the word “Blackhawks”—the Prairie du Chien High School mascot.
“So I guess you know about the no-cheese thing?”
“Gawd,” she says, with an eye roll.
“We’ve eaten here, like, a thousand times,” the guy says. His jacket is unbuttoned to show off his Packers T-shirt.
“Do you know Maeve Samms?” I ask.
Knob asks, “That your gal?”
“No.”
“She’s new,” the girl says, as if that’s the worst possible thing to be.
“Do you know where she lives?”
“Some farm,” the guy says.
“Last week she came to school with straw in her hair,” the girl says with a flip of her straw-colored ponytail. They turn away from us. The guy whispers something; the girl giggles. I look down the street toward the coffee shop and watch a woman cross the street and go in. She is not Gaia. I wonder what it’s like for Gaia to go to a new school with kids like these. I wonder if she wears her makeup, her boots and black jeans, her art T-shirts.
“What about Gaia Nygren?” I ask. “Do you know her?”
The girl makes a face. “That freak?” She sniffs and turns her back. I guess Gaia has made an impression on the locals.
The girl whispers something to the guy. He looks back at Knob and says, “Culver’s smells better too.” They abandon the line and walk away, presumably in the direction of Culver’s.
“I don’t think they liked me,” Knob says.
“I don’t think they liked either of us.” The line shuffles forward, and suddenly I’m not hungry anymore. Part of it is the greasy burger roiling around in my stomach, but mostly I feel sick about the two petty, nasty locals. I want to chase after them and yell at them for their assholery, but I know it wouldn’t do any good.
I take a bill from my wallet and hand it to Knob.
“What’s this?” he says.
“I have to go, Knob.” I step out of line.
“You want with or without?”
“Neither. It’s all yours.”
“This is too much, man,” he says, looking at the money. I thought I was giving him a ten, but now I see that it’s the hundred-dollar bill I got from Bran’s mother. My hand starts to reach for it; then I stop.
“Keep it,” I hear myself say. “Catch a bus to Rhinelander.”
He stares at me, uncomprehending. “Uh . . . thanks?”
“It’s cool.” I walk down to the coffee shop and look in the window. No Maeve; no Gaia. What if she never shows up? What makes me think she will? She probably has a hundred other things to do on a Saturday afternoon. Feeding the chickens or whatever they do on a farm. She could be having fun.
It hits me like a knee to my balls just how pathetic I am. I try to think of people who are more pathetic. All the losers I’ve met, and I can’t think of one more pathetic than me. Knob? Knob is an okay guy, except for his aroma. And he’s happy. The huge guy in Hannibal complaining about the lack of golf carts? He was overweight and uncomfortable, but at least he was getting out and doing things, like looking at Tom Sawyer’s fence. He told me I had no romance, and maybe he was right, or at least I didn’t have as much romance as he did.
Bran? Bran was a jerk, but he’d be fine in his big house with his marble statue of a mother. Even the couple I just left in line. They were nasty, rude, small-eyed small-town snobs, but they had each other. What do I have? Bran Fetzig’s hoodie, a John Deere cap, and a ketchup-stained polo shirt that was my dad’s.
Maybe the last thing on earth Gaia wants or needs is to see me. Maybe she had a perfectly good reason to dump me. Maybe the barista was right about me being a stalker.
I look back at all the people lining up for their cheeseless, boiled, pulverized cow muscle, with or without. Knob is at the front of the line. I wonder how many burgers he’ll eat. I can taste the grease coating the back of my throat, and I wish I could throw up. Throw up so hard that I’d turn inside out and disappear. My feet move me down the sidewalk away from the smell of onion and meat and coffee. I only make it a few yards before I sit down on a metal bench in front of a bar called Fort Mulligan’s. A mulligan is a do over. My dad used to say it all the time when he screwed up, like when he put a new faucet on the kitchen sink and turned it on and water shot out everywhere. “Guess I better take a mulligan on that,” he would say before taking it apart and starting over. I want a mulligan for my whole pathetic life.
I squeeze my eyes shut and take a deep breath through my mouth, let it out shakily. I don’t know why I’m feeling this way, like my whole life I’ve been dealing with assholes and now I have to deal with myself. Was this what it was like for my dad? Like, he thought everything was a crock of shit, and then one day he realized he was the biggest crock of shit of all, so he shot himself on Groundhog Day? Not like the movie. You don’t get a mulligan after you shoot yourself in the neck.
Thinking back over the past week—has it only been a week? What did I think I was doing? Where would I end up?
I alwa
ys knew there was a place where I could end up. Back in Saint Andrew Valley, living with my mom. Sure, I can drive around pretending to be free, pretending I’m leaving it all behind, but I’m not really free at all, and I’m not leaving anything behind because it’s all permanently attached to me. Knob was right. I’m a nexus, and everybody I ever knew or will ever know is part of me whether I want them to be or not.
Was that why Dad did it? Because it was the only way he could break free? Am I thinking about him because I’m sitting on a metal bench?
I open my eyes. There is no river, just a small-town street on a Saturday afternoon. There is something in my hand. The Pepsi can. I take a sip; it’s warm and flat. I look around for a trash can. There’s a girl with flame-red hair and a green flannel shirt standing a few yards away, looking straight at me.
“Stiggy,” she says.
It’s Gaia.
Happy Birthday, Ronny
January 31, two days before Groundhog Day, was Dad’s last birthday.
For the previous several weeks, ever since the holidays, things had been tense and weirdly quiet at home. Every day after work Dad would shut himself in the den until it was time for dinner. He would eat without saying much except for things like, “I don’t know why we always have to have salad,” or, “This pork has no taste! Factory farms! What a crock!”
Instead of snapping back at him or arguing, Mom would let it pass. That wasn’t like her. When Dad was done eating, he’d go back to the den, close the door, and turn on the TV, not even offering to help with the dishes.
Mom took on a bunch of household tasks she’d been putting off. Organizing closets and cleaning under the sink and dusting places that never got dusted. Like she had to keep moving, making our house a better place in every little way she could imagine. I spent a lot of time rereading my comics and Star Wars books.
I didn’t get what was going on. I figured it was just winter blahs.
On Dad’s birthday everything changed. It was like the sun came out. He announced that he was taking a day off from work and I was taking a day off from school. He took Mom and me out to breakfast at the Saint Andrew Inn. We sat at a window table looking out over the river. I had waffles, bacon, a cinnamon roll, toast, and fresh-squeezed orange juice. They had these miniature jars with four different kinds of jelly and jam, and I tried them all. Mom ordered a spinach omelet and a fresh fruit plate. Dad had eggs Benedict, sausage, pancakes, hash browns, and a Bloody Mary. He wasn’t much of a drinker—maybe a beer or two on weekends, and that was it. I guess it was a special occasion.
“Do you remember the last time we came here?” he asked me.
I didn’t.
“I’m not surprised—you were only three years old. It was our tenth anniversary.”
“We were almost asked to leave,” Mom said with a smile.
“What did you do?” I asked.
Dad laughed. “It was what you did, Stig.”
“You threw a pancake,” Mom said. “It hit one of the other diners in the face.”
“It was a perfect shot,” Dad said. “I figured you’d grow up to be a professional Frisbee player.” He reached over and put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “But whatever you decide to do with your life, I want you to know we’re proud of you.”
It was a strange moment. Dad was not a touchy-feely kind of guy, and I don’t think he’d ever told me he was proud of me before. I sat there, stunned, my mouth hanging open, with my dad’s hand on my shoulder and my mom smiling in a way I hadn’t seen in a while. After a few seconds his hand slid away and he started talking about the first time he had ordered eggs Benedict.
“I was about your age, Stig. This girl I was dating invited me out for a fancy brunch with her family. The girl’s father ordered eggs Benedict, so I ordered the same thing. I didn’t know eggs Benedict from Egg McMuffin. When the waiter brought it, I was completely grossed out by the yellow sauce. I scraped it off. The poached egg was staring up at me like a blobby eye, so I scraped that off too and just ate the ham and the muffin. Then I realized they were all looking at me—the girl, her mom and dad, and her little sister—like I was this uneducated Neanderthal.” He laughed. “Not far off the mark. Anyway, the girl broke up with me a few days later, and I decided I was going to learn to love eggs Benedict.”
Mom said, “On our first date you ordered it for dinner.”
“Now you know why. I wanted to make sure you knew I was a sophisticate.”
They both thought that was hilarious.
Later that day Mom made Dad’s favorite dinner: pot roast with rutabagas and little potatoes. His birthday was the only day of the year we ate rutabagas—Dad called them “swedes”—because neither Mom nor I liked them. While she was cooking, Dad took me to see a matinee at the Heights, that old theater where they showed classic movies. The movie was called Five Easy Pieces.
“My all-time favorite film,” he said as we settled in.
The movie was kind of slow except for this one part where Jack Nicholson has a fight with a waitress and ends up knocking everything off the table onto the floor. I could imagine doing that. I kept looking at Dad. He was watching the screen so intently, it was like he was inside the movie. I didn’t understand a lot of it, especially the ending, but afterward the movie stayed with me.
On the way out of the theater, Dad was quiet. He didn’t ask me what I thought about the movie. When we got in the car, I asked him about the ending, where Jack Nicholson gives his girlfriend his wallet and jumps in a truck and leaves her. He thought for a moment before answering.
“It’s about not wanting to hurt people,” he said. “It’s about keeping all the hurt inside. Bobby just couldn’t stand who he was anymore.” “Bobby” was the name of Jack Nicholson’s character. “He didn’t want his misery to spill over onto everybody else.”
“Oh,” I said, as if I understood.
He gave me a light sock on the shoulder. “Don’t be like Bobby,” he said, then laughed.
Dad didn’t talk much at dinner that night, except to tell Mom how perfect the pot roast was, and how rutabagas were the perfect vegetable. He didn’t seem sad, exactly, just very relaxed, like everything was going to be okay. It was the first night in a long time when he didn’t once complain about his job, or tell us that some politician was a crock, or how much his back hurt from sitting at a desk all day. Instead he smiled and enjoyed his birthday dinner.
I understand now. He was at peace because that was the day he decided to kill himself.
“This Is Not a Love Song”
Public Image Ltd.
4:12
“Naomi told me you were here.”
It takes a second for me to remember that “Naomi” is the name of the barista in the coffee shop.
I say, “Oh. Her. I, um, I was hoping I’d run into you.”
“Are you okay, Stiggy?”
“Sure.”
“Because you look kind of rough.”
“It’s been a long week.”
“Why did you come here, Stiggy?”
Why? It’s a simple question, but I’m having trouble getting the right words out, so I say something else.
“You’re wearing a green shirt.”
“So?”
“Your hair is red.”
“Yeah, and Maeve’s hair is green now. Everybody hates us. What are you doing here?”
I can’t figure out her expression. She doesn’t seem glad to see me, but she doesn’t seem mad or disgusted or anything. Maybe just curious?
“Can we go for a walk?” I hold my breath.
“We can go to the park,” she says.
• • •
Saint Feriole Island park is a few blocks away, along the river. It’s one of those historic sites with lots of old buildings. Some are brick, some are log cabins. There’s a museum and a historic villa and a baseball field. People are walking and biking on the narrow roadways. We walk to the river, neither of us talking, and stand side by side at the railing on
the concrete pier. There are two guys fishing from an aluminum boat about a hundred feet offshore. It looks like a father and his young son. It makes me think of my dad.
“Prairie started here, as a fur trading center,” Gaia tells me. “It’s the second-oldest city in Wisconsin.”
“What’s the oldest?”
“I don’t know. I just know about Prairie because I work here.”
“Where do you work?”
“Here, in the park. At the museum gift shop.” She points off to the right. “I was working when Naomi called me.”
“She acted like she didn’t really know you.”
“She thought maybe I didn’t want to see you.”
“Oh.” Do you? I’m afraid to ask. “I’m not stalking you.”
“I didn’t think you were.”
“I’m just trying to . . . trying to figure things out. Figure out what happened. You know. With us.”
Gaia doesn’t say anything for a long time. She’s not looking at me; she’s watching the father and son fishing. Or maybe she’s not even seeing them.
“I want to understand,” I say.
Gaia nods. “You seem different.”
I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but I ask her, “How so?”
“You haven’t said anything bad about anybody.”
I think about the arguing couple in line at Pete’s, and about Bran, and Allie and Randy, and the tweakers, Babe and Honeypie. I think about Garf.
“I gave my Darth Vader stuff to Garf.”
She looks at me for the first time since we got to the river. “You did? What about Wonder Woman?”
“I sold her. To Garf. Only I think he’s mad at me right now. We kind of had a fight.”
“What did you do?”
I shrug.
She shakes her head and turns back to the river. “Your mom was here.”
“She was?” I’m not sure I heard her right.
“Three days ago. I guess my dad told her where I was. She came down with your uncle Donny. She’s worried about you.”
“She is?” I don’t know why that surprises me so much.
“She’s your mom!” A flash of anger.
